John Ivison: Canada’s wealthy may have started a tax revolt, and Ontario is the first to notice

Source: National Post
Author: John Ivison

OTTAWA — Last week’s Ontario fiscal update may have yielded the tax equivalent of a butterfly moving its wings in one jurisdiction and causing a tornado in another.

The provincial update revealed that personal income tax revenues in the country’s largest province were downgraded to come in nearly $2 billion lower than forecast in the spring budget, despite an upgrade in projected economic growth.

No explanation was offered for this unusual set of circumstances — tax revenues should rise in a growing economy — but the suspicion is that high-earning Canadians are fed up seeing more than 50 cents on every dollar they earn over $200,000 taken by the taxman.

In short, they are behaving exactly as all the studies on the subject predicted they would — they are increasingly engaged in what is known euphemistically as “tax planning.”

Read the full article here.